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23. Report and Dashboard Design Principles

23.1 Start With the Audience and Questions

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Quick answer: the short, self-contained version of this lesson is the guide Power BI Report Layout Design.

Report design starts with the audience — example — in 30 seconds

What: Good design starts with who reads the report and which questions they ask. Charts come last.

Why: A page with 12 visuals looks busy. The state head needs 4 answers in 5 seconds.

Tiny example: Question "Where are deliveries late?" → one bar chart of % late by city, sorted high to low.

First look at the data (before → after):

Report design starts with the audience — example: before and after tables, fictional Blinkit Maharashtra data

Same before / after tables as text

Before — Page before: visuals with no plan (4 of 12 shown)

Visual Answers a question?
Pie of payment mode No
Gauge of orders No
Table of 500 orders No
Bar of sales by city Yes

About this data: This table uses columns: Visual, Answers a question?. This table uses columns: Question (state head), Visual. This table uses columns: Wrong result, Reason, Correction. Values shown are the lesson examples already on this page (not a new dataset).

Formula / click path

Audience → questions → one visual per question
Remove or move any visual that answers no question

After — Page after: one visual per question

Question (state head) Visual
How much did we sell? Card: Total Sales
Is it growing? Line: Sales by month
Which city is behind target? Bar: Sales vs target by city
Where are deliveries late? Bar: % late by city

Do it step by step:

  1. Write the audience at the top of your page plan, for example "Blinkit Maharashtra state head".
  2. Write 3 to 5 questions in their words.
  3. Next to each question, write one KPI or one visual.
  4. Mark every visual on the current page that answers none of the questions.
  5. Delete those visuals or move them to a detail page.
  6. Do the 5-second test: can a new person find the answer to question 1 in 5 seconds?

Before opening Power BI, ask:

  • Who will use the report? (CEO, city manager, dark store staff)
  • What decisions will they make with it?
  • Which 3–5 KPIs matter most to them?
  • How often will they look at it, and on which device?

The dashboard exists because someone has to act before the next peak, not because a page was empty. In this course the peak is lunch and evening in a Maharashtra dark store, in IST. The person acting is a city manager or the operations lead. If the page does not change what they do before that peak, the business got a picture. It did not get a decision.

Think about what the business actually receives when the page is right.

  • A name. Not "sales are fine". A store, a city, or a platform.
  • A size. Two late deliveries is a conversation. Twenty is a staffing plan. The page has to show which one it is.
  • A shared meaning. "Late" means the same thing in Pune and in Nashik: a delivered order outside the 10-minute promise. If one person counts every order and another counts only delivered orders, they will argue from the same file and both sound sure.
  • A stop. The things that do not change today's action stay off the first screen. That is a gift to the reader, not a missing feature.

Think about what the business receives when the page is wrong. The Monday call starts from the biggest number. The biggest number in a busy week is often total orders. The store that needs a rider is not always the store with the most orders. A rider moves to the loud card. The quiet late store waits until a customer complains. That is the whole cost. It is larger than an ugly colour.

So the four questions at the top of this section are not a form to fill before you are "allowed" to click. They are how you protect that Monday.

  • Who changes the grain. Rani, looking across cities, can live with a city bar for the first ten seconds. Shraddha Bagale in Nashik cannot. Her job is a dark store. Ravindra Bagale in Pune has the same job on different stores. A page drawn for Rani and handed to Shraddha will look complete and still hide Gangapur inside a Nashik bar.
  • What decision changes the maths. "Are we inside the promise?" needs a rate with a denominator you can say out loud. "Were we busy?" needs a count. Mixing them on one card is how a vanity metric gets a title.
  • Which 3–5 KPIs is a limit, not a challenge to reach five. Three that change the decision beat eight that describe the business. Section 23.8 walks one decision down to three, on Nashik rows you can add by hand.
  • How often, and on which device changes density. A phone at a dark-store counter gets the cards. A laptop in the Monday call can take one more chart. Neither device gets a gallery.

A report that answers clear questions for a specific audience is nehmi more useful than one with many charts. The charts are the evidence. The question is the product.

Ravindra Bagale's Tip

Friends, many students design for themselves instead of the audience, and a city manager gets a page full of technical detail. Write down who will use each page and the three questions they ask every morning, and design only for those. Don't worry – after doing it two or three times, it becomes a habit.

Fix common mistakes

Wrong result Reason Correction
Page full of technical columns Designed for yourself List the user and their 3 questions first
Manager cannot find Kolhapur No city filter in view Add a City slicer in the header

Practise independently

Practice task

Write the three morning questions for Zoya (Kolhapur manager) and pick one visual for each.

Practice file (fictional): visuals_orders_apr_may_2026.csv

Hints
  • Sales, delivery speed, cancellations.
Solution

Total Sales card (₹450), Avg delivery card (7.0 min), Cancellation rate card (1 of 2 = 50%).

Ravi Sir's Cards for this lesson

Start with the audience and questions. A report that tries to answer everything answers nothing well.Revision card

मराठी cards